Splash one Fulcrum. A team of U.S. military personnel examines the remains of an enemy MiG-29 fighter (NATO code name Fulcrum) which was shot down in Bosnian airspace by a USAF F-15C on the afternoon of March 26, 1999. The downed aircraft, which appeared to have strayed from its planned course due to a loss of situation awareness by its pilot, brought to five the number of MiG-29s destroyed in early Allied Force air encounters.
Hard-target killer. This F-15E pilot, a USAF major assigned to the 494th Fighter Squadron, looks over a 4,700-lb electro-optically-guided GBU-28 bunker-buster munition mounted on his aircraft’s centerline stores station. The aircraft, one of a two-ship flight of F-15Es (call sign Lance 31 and 32), delivered the weapon on April 28, 1999, against an underground hangar at the Serb air base at Podgorica.
Precision attack. In April 1999, a single B-2 achieved six accurately placed GBU-31 JDAM hits against six runway-taxiway intersections at the Obvra military airfield in Serbia, precluding operations by enemy fighters until repairs could be completed. This post-strike image graphically shows the B-2’s ability with JDAM to achieve the effects of mass without having to mass, regardless of weather.
A bridge no more. Another post-strike battle-damage assessment image shows this bridge in Serbia cut in two places by a precision bombing attack. Sometimes enemy bridges were dropped at the behest of NATO target planners to prevent the flow of traffic over them. At other times, they were attacked and damaged to sever key fiber-optic communications lines that were known to run through them.
Before and after. This bridge over the Danube River near Novi Sad in Serbia, shown here in both pre- and post-strike imagery, was all but completely demolished by precision bombing on Day 9 of Allied Force as Phase III of the air war, for the first time, ramped up operations to include attacks against not only Serbian IADS and fielded military assets but also key infrastructure targets.
Effects-based targeting. For three consecutive nights beginning on May 24, U.S. aircraft struck electrical power facilities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Nis, the three largest cities in Serbia, shutting off electrical power to 80 percent of Serbia. This transformer yard in Belgrade was one such target that was attacked in what was arguably the most influential strike of Allied Force to that point.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS
Air Force Basic Doctrine, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, Headquarters Air Force Doctrine Center, AFDD-1, September 1997.
The Air War Over Serbia: Aerospace Power in Operation Allied Force, Washington, D.C., Headquarters United States Air Force, April 1, 2000.
Cohen, Secretary of Defense William S., and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Henry H. Shelton, Kosovo/Operation Allied Force After-Action Report, Washington, D.C., Department of Defense, Report to Congress, January 31, 2000.
Kosovo: Lessons from the Crisis, Report to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Defense, The Stationery Office, London, England, June 2000.
CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY
Clark, General Wesley, USA, testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., July 1, 1999.
Cohen, Secretary of Defense William S., and General Henry H. Shelton, “Joint Statement on the Kosovo After-Action Review,” testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 14, 1999.
Esmond, Lieutenant General Marvin R., testimony to the Military Procurement Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 19, 1999.
Jumper, General John, USAF, testimony to the Military Readiness Subcommittee, House Armed Services Committee, Washington, D.C., October 26, 1999.
BOOKS
Andric, Ivo, The Bridge on the Drina, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Clark, General Wesley K., Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat, New York, Public Affairs, 2001.
Daalder, Ivo H., and Michael E. O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, 2000.
Dylewski, Major General Gary, “The USAF Space Warfare Center: Bringing Space to the Warfighter,” in Peter L. Hays et al., eds., Spacepower for a New Millennium: Space and U.S. National Security, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2000.
Gentile, Gian P., How Effective Is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo, New York, New York University Press, 2001.
Glenny, Misha, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1809–1999, New York: Penguin Books, 2000.
Ignatieff, Michael, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, New York, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 2000.
Judah, Tim, Kosovo: War and Revenge, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 2000.
Lambeth, Benjamin S., The Transformation of American Air Power, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2000.
Macgregor, Colonel Douglas A., USA, Breaking the Phalanx: A New Design for Landpower in the 21st Century, Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, 1997.
Mason, Air Vice Marshal Tony, RAF (Ret.), Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal, London, Brassey’s, 1994.
Owen, Colonel Robert, USAF, ed., Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaigning, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, Air University Press, January 2000.
Rackham, Peter, ed., Jane’s C4I Systems, 1994–95, London, Jane’s Information Group, 1994.
Short, Lieutenant General Michael C., USAF (Ret.), “An Airman’s Lessons from Kosovo,” in John Andreas Olsen, ed., From Maneuver Warfare to Kosovo, Trondheim, Norway, Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, 2001, pp. 257–288.
Thompson, Wayne, To Hanoi and Back: The U.S. Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966–1973, Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institute Press, 2000.
MONOGRAPHS AND REPORTS
Byman, Daniel L., Matthew C. Waxman, and Eric Larson, Air Power as a Coercive Instrument, Santa Monica, California, RAND, MR-1061-AF, 1999.
Hosmer, Stephen T., The Conflict over Kosovo: Why Milosevic Decided to Settle When He Did, Santa Monica, California, RAND, MR-1351-AF, 2001.
The Military Balance, 1998/99, London, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998.
Peters, John E., Stuart Johnson, Nora Bensahel, Timothy Liston, and Traci Williams, European Contributions to Operation Allied Force: Implications for Transatlantic Cooperation, Santa Monica, California, RAND, MR-1391-AF, 2001.
Stephens, Alan, Kosovo, or the Future of War, Paper Number 77, Air Power Studies Center, RAAF Fairbairn, Australia, August 1999.
Strategic Survey 1999/2000, London, England, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2000.